Movie review: Girls just want to have fights in Unforgettable’

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Apr 20, 2017 at 12:01 AMApr 20, 2017 at 9:49 AM

Ed Symkus More Content Now

There’s a divide in Hollywood over what movies are made with which audiences in mind. Whether or not it’s true for everyone, the studios believe that men like the tough and violent ones, and women like the ones with a softer side.

So it’s time to shake things up a bit. Producer Denise Di Novi has so far had her name on four films adapted from books by Nicholas Sparks -- “Message in a Bottle,” “A Walk to Remember,” “Nights in Rodanthe,” and “The Lucky One” (there’s a possibility that the only men who saw those were critics who were getting paid to see them). This one’s for both teams.

For her first film as a director, Di Novi has chosen a road that leaves behind the treacle and opts for the tension. “Unforgettable” is a sure-handed nail biter about a nice fellow, the woman he’s about to marry, and the woman he divorced. But the two women -- fiancee Julia (Rosario Dawson) and ex-wife Tessa (Katherine Heigl) -- don’t exactly like each other. OK, they grow to hate each other. Oh, come on, if they could make it happen, there would be a last woman standing scenario.

The film opens in a way I generally don’t like them to open. Something awful has happened, the results of which are talked about but not explained, then it all flashes back to tell the story. But I’m pleased to report that it works quite well this time, and when that flashback kicks in, the beginning is forgotten.

So, after the intro, we go back in time to find Julia, living and working in San Francisco, being congratulated by friends for her decision to leave everything behind, and start life over again with her new boyfriend in Southern California. That’s David (Geoff Stults), who shares custody of young Lily (Isabella Kai Rice) with Tessa, who lives nearby.

Julia is, as her friends say, a survivor. When everything went wrong with her now ex-husband Michael (Simon Kassianides), she got a restraining order put in place, and life went on. But she still has momentary mind’s eye glimpses of him snarling things such as, “You’re worthless!” But she’s getting better every day.

Tessa is another story. She spends a lot of time gazing into mirrors, liking what she sees. She’s also a demanding, manipulative woman with an icy cold demeanor. Since Lily goes back and forth between her and David, it’s inevitable that she’ll meet Julia. When she does, and when she sees that Lily has taken to Julia, a switch goes off inside Tessa, a switch that rocks her already disturbed foundation. You know that nothing good is going to come out of this relationship.

But you’ve got to smile, even if it’s done uncomfortably, upon the arrival of Tessa’s mom, Helen (Cheryl Ladd), a woman more controlling than her daughter, who is unafraid to state her feelings about anything. When she tells Tessa that she hasn’t polished the silverware properly, you immediately understand where Tessa is coming from.

We know that Tessa is scheming and nefarious, but not to what degree. We know that Julia is damaged goods, but we don’t know the details. Somehow things get around to Tessa running a background check on Julia, and Julia doing the same on Tessa. Each finds some juicy stuff, leading to a buildup of tension that gets good guy David and innocent Lily stuck in the middle.

By the time it all gets back to the opening scene, we, too, are caught in the film’s sticky web. Things go from boiling-over tension to out-and-out violence. No one will be caught off-guard when it erupts into a physical confrontation between Julia and Tessa. That could be seen coming for the previous hour and a quarter. The film gets around to one of those “six months later” endings, another overused cliche that I like as much as what happened at the beginning. Surprisingly, both of them work perfectly here.